In general, aiming light assemblies which are used to assist in aiming a weapon are well known. Typically, an aiming light assembly is connected to a weapon and is used to generate an aiming beam (visible or invisible) which may be directed at a target to assist in aiming the weapon. A number of types of aiming lights are known, including, for example, visible laser aiming lights and infrared lights which are used with night vision goggles. An example of an aiming light assembly is disclosed in commonly owned U.S. application Ser. No. 07/957,916 entitled "Aiming Light Assembly and Mounting Therefor." FIGS. 1 and 1a of the present application show an example of such an aiming light assembly. For effective operation, once mounted to the weapon, the aiming light assembly must be boresighted, or zeroed. The process of boresighting, or zeroing, per se, is well known.
Generally speaking, boresighting refers to the process of aligning the aiming beam so that it coincides with the actual target area of the weapon for a given distance, i.e. the area where ammunition fired from the weapon will impact the target. Due to the ballistic trajectory of ammunition fired from a weapon, boresighting typically must be performed for a particular target distance or range. In the past, this has been primarily accomplished by manual adjustment of the aiming beam, for example, in vertical and/or horizontal directions via one or more adjustment mechanisms.
This manual boresighting of aiming light assemblies has been largely performed by trial and error. That is to say, an aiming light assembly attached to a weapon would be boresighted by coarsely adjusting the aiming beam based on an estimate made by the user for a given target distance. Then the aiming light would be activated to generate an aiming beam which was aimed at a target and several rounds of ammunition would be fired at the target. If the ammunition did not hit the target coincident with the location of the aiming beam on the target, a boresighting adjustment would be made and the process repeated until the aiming beam was accurately boresighted. Other types of manual boresighting techniques are known. Manual boresighting techniques are time consuming which is obviously an undesirable drawback. Other drawbacks also exist.